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A catch-44 is a situation where funding and support is said to be available from government bodies however defining eligibility for the funding and how to properly articulate the application restricts access by those that most require it.

The term was coined by Hayden Stowell in 2015 in his frustration to establish eligibility for research and development funding from Callaghan Innovation, a Crown entity of New Zealand with the task of making New Zealand business more innovative.

This dilemma further exasperated the fast growing indigenous māori tech start-up community with other Crown entities following suit with confusing and poorly articulated application questionnaires combined with frustratingly inefficient systems to qualify and process submitted applications.

Although conceived in jest based on the paradoxical Catch 22 phrase, the seriousness and frequency of similar dilemma’s saw the phrase become widely adopted in other parts of the world. Catch 44 is now a widely used phrase to describe any situation where funding or valuable contracts have been promoted by either the government or public sectors, however securing them seems virtually un-achievable to all but a very select few for the reasons mentioned above.

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